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Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Tuesday's Tip - Inserting PDF files in Blogger with Scribd

Have you ever wanted to include a .PDF file in a blog post? I love PDF files and they are especially nice for blog posts because you can include a lot of information and/or images in a relatively small file format that is not editable.

For posting PDF files on my blog I use Scribd. Scribd is a website that touts itself as "The World’s Largest Online Library. Read, Publish, and Share Documents and Written Works." Simply put, you can upload PDF files to the site, it gives you a link and you insert that link into your blog post; just like you would any other web link.

To upload a file you must have a free account on Scribd or you can log in with Facebook. Once you have set up your account you can "publish" your PDF files by clicking either of the two links circled in red above.

As with any web upload, a screen appears with several upload options. You can import from Google docs, sell your documents in the Scribd store and even download a quick upload tool. But, we are going the simple route. Click on the blue "Upload" button and you will be able to browse for your PDF file for upload.

Once you upload your document you will be given a web address link that you can insert into your blog post. You can also see past uploaded documents on your "shelf." Click on the document you want to create a link to.

You can either link to the document or embed the document by clicking on the links circled in red above. Links are a good option if it is not necessary to "see" the document in your post. If you would like to be able to see the PDF, the embed option is the route to go.

When you click on the embed link the above dialogue box appears. You are given several options: HTML, Flash and WordPress. I have a Blogger site, so I chose to embed the HTML code. You can also click the check box to include a link to the Scribd site in the HTML code. Copy the code.

Start a new post on blogger and click on the edit in HTML tab as circled above. Paste your HTML code into the document. You can then click on the Compose tab and see your handy work.

27 comments:

Great post, Heather - it will solve my puzzle of how to put my ancestry reports online (big files!).

The one question I have is "can Scribd documents be searched by a search engine?" I searched for "mcguire family" "ray county missouri" "anderson county kentucky" and it found your Scribd page - the only match!

I will do a few more searches just to make sure...then another major task to create and upload the reports.

Randy, I definitely think they come up on searches. I have done a search for my McGuire family since posting and this document always shows up. There is also an option to make documents "private" when you upload them. This might be an option for things you want to share, but only with a select group of people.

This is the answer to maybe putting my pdf census extractions into my new Blogger , maybe Drupal & Genealogy.com sites .Not sure if Dropbox will work as well as Scribd as it's hard to arrange documents visually without an extra app.

Wow, I am so glad you put this in a post. I have wondered about this for a while and the instructions are easy. I joined your gfc so I can stay in the loop. http://onecreativeprocrastinatinggal.blogspot.com/

Thank you so much - I've been wondering about this and your post was very helpful. I'm an interior decorator and just started using Power Point for my design boards, and I knew there was a way to put a PDF into a blog post and you answered my question.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I have been trying unsuccessfully to put a pdf on my blog and followed numerous tutorials for doing it with Google Drive - nothing worked. Saw your post and within minutes had it figured out! A million thanks! Nancy